{"id":26828,"date":"2025-09-09T10:26:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T10:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thinx.expert\/?p=26828"},"modified":"2025-09-09T10:40:45","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T10:40:45","slug":"when-the-impossible-becomes-possible-the-case-of-the-granting-of-the-trademark-impossible-bakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thinx.expert\/en\/when-the-impossible-becomes-possible-the-case-of-the-granting-of-the-trademark-impossible-bakers\/","title":{"rendered":"When the impossible becomes possible: the case of the granting of the trademark \u201cIMPOSSIBLE BAKERS\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author: Dr. Manuela Ferrario<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

When something is so unlikely as to be impossible, one says \u201cwhen elephants fly.\u201d However, a recent decision of the General Court of the European Union granted protection to a trademark that initially seemed doomed\u2026<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On 23 July 2025, the General Court in fact put an end to a dispute that began in 2021 regarding the registrability of the trademark \u201cIMPOSSIBLE BAKERS\u201d represented as follows:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Spanish company Impossible Foods S.l. had initially requested protection for the cited trademark in relation to the following products:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Class 30: \u201c<\/span>Bakery goods; Pastries; Viennoiserie; Edible ices; Sweetmeats [candy]; Cakes<\/span><\/i>\u201d;<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Class 35: \u201c<\/span>Wholesaling, retailing in shops and via global computer networks of the following goods: Bread products, Pastry products, Dry cakes, ice cream, Chocolates, sweets, Cake<\/span><\/i>.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, a United States company, Impossible Foods Inc., had filed opposition on the basis of the risk of confusion with the earlier trademark \u201cIMPOSSIBLE,\u201d also claiming its alleged reputation.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Although the EUIPO Opposition Division had in an initial judgment accepted the opposition, the Board of Appeal later reopened the matter maintaining that there was no reason to reject the contested trademark application.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The applicant \u2013 the United States company \u2013 therefore appealed to the Court in order to have recognized the risk of confusion, which it deemed existent.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the proceedings, the discussion mainly dealt with the comparison between the signs, since the evaluations of the Board of Appeal regarding the degree of attention of the public (varying from low to medium) as well as the comparison between products and services (recognized as identical in class 30 and similar in class 35) were not contested.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But let us then come to the heart of the decision: are the signs similar and confusing or not?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Court focused first on the assessment of the term \u201cIMPOSSIBLE,\u201d present in both the compared marks. Confirming the evaluation of the Board of Appeal, it was clarified that \u201cIMPOSSIBLE\u201d is not a descriptive term but rather a laudatory one, since the relevant public will be led to believe that the claimed products or services possess exceptional qualities or are so excellent that these qualities could appear impossible or unreal.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the arguments of the applicant, aimed at convincing that such a term had a negative connotation and alluded in an extremely fanciful manner to the products, the Court held that the term \u201cIMPOSSIBLE\u201d could be considered weak, that is, endowed with a very low distinctive character.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This means that the weight of the term \u201cIMPOSSIBLE\u201d within the comparison of trademarks will be very limited, and the fact that it is the only common element between the signs will not be considered substantially relevant.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Coming now to the word \u201cBAKERS,\u201d it was considered the dominant element of the contested trademark because of its preeminent size compared to the other verbal element \u201cIMPOSSIBLE.\u201d The figure of the elephant with wings also had a certain importance, as it was \u201cquite striking\u201d and therefore endowed with a not negligible distinctive character.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Therefore, it emerged that the signs were weakly similar from the visual point of view, because of their different structure and the many differences between them \u2013 for example, the figurative element of the elephant, the inverted double \u201cs,\u201d the dominance of the element \u201cBAKERS.\u201d Moreover, food products are often selected and purchased directly by the consumer, who picks them from the shelf without paying too much attention to the content of the labels, being guided by the overall appearance: this determines a greater importance of the figurative elements compared to the verbal ones.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

From the phonetic point of view, instead, the signs were considered similar at a medium degree.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, the assessment concluded that there was no conceptual similarity: in fact, the element \u201cIMPOSSIBLE\u201d has a limited impact as it is scarcely distinctive, and the remaining elements have rather different conceptual meanings between them.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Consequently, the Court confirmed the absence of the risk of confusion.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In conclusion, this case also made it possible to clarify the evaluations of the EUIPO regarding the distinctive character of the term \u201cIMPOSSIBLE,\u201d until now not particularly explicit, giving it a rather modest degree of distinctiveness and making it a term of little appeal for differentiating a trademark from earlier ones.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 THINX Srl \u2013 September 2025<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author: Dr. Manuela Ferrario When something is so unlikely as to be impossible, one says \u201cwhen elephants fly.\u201d However, a recent decision of the General Court of the European Union…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[204,205],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-en","category-pressroom-en-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinx.expert\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinx.expert\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinx.expert\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinx.expert\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinx.expert\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26828"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thinx.expert\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26829,"href":"https:\/\/thinx.expert\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26828\/revisions\/26829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinx.expert\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinx.expert\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinx.expert\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinx.expert\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}